How to save and send logs from CORTEX to support

If you experience any kind of crash or abnormal behavior with CORTEX we may ask you to send us various logs, or you may wish to inspect them yourself to help diagnose the problem.

You now view the log directly from within Cortex now. Click the ‘Log’ button in the upper right of the application.

If there are any errors, the text on this button will turn red and a number will indicate how many errors there are. When you open this window, you can filter log messages based on severity as well as content:

Additionally, you can save the logs, and optionally a snapshot of your project database, as well as the command files for any render and copy jobs in your current day/job, along with a description of the problem you encountered.

This will create a zip file that can be sent to support for further investigation:

If you are experiencing an issue that is preventing you from running CORTEX, you will have to find the logs manually.

There are a few things to look for:

In the C:\temp directory, we store csv log files for each application that runs. A new log file is created for each day, so you the most recent one will be at the bottom when you sort by name or modified date. Reverse sort to make the most recent ones come up at the top:

You can open the log file in a standard text editor like notepad or notepad++, or you can use a spreadsheet application like excel or libre office.

You will see lines like this in the log files:

"0","Cortex","Information","Cortex//AddVerifyInfo(0): Create VerifyInfoList took 3 ms","","03-26-2014 17:09:28.309","13120","12","2084846998054","RETINA01"
"0","Cortex","Information","Cortex//AddVerifyInfo(0): Sort VerifyInfoList took 19 ms","","03-26-2014 17:09:28.329","13120","12","2084847048587","RETINA01"
"0","Cortex","Error","Cortex//RaiseExceptionIfNecessary(0): Cortex unhandled exception: The process cannot access the file 'C:\ProgramData\MTI\DB\test2_season_03_2014\jobs\2014_03_26.7-b1ba18fd7ab144c08e20fd99128ca5a7\large-242316ef372842098955314f70f92108-verify.logfile' because it is being used by another process.","","03-26-2014 17:09:28.448","13120","7","2084847350015","RETINA01"

Any line that starts with “Error” is worth looking at when you have a potential problem.

If you are reporting an issue to us, we may ask you to send us these files.

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Also, if you crash, in addition to the cortex log files, there may be more info in the stack trace in the windows error log.

  1. Right-click My Computer
  2. Select ‘Manage’
  3. Browse to:
    System Tools > Event Viewer > Windows Logs > Application
  4. Look for errors (they usually come in pairs)
  5. Select the 1st one (bottom one) from the pair
  6. Select all the text in the bottom pane and paste it into your message.

Infrequently, MTI Support may ask you to create a verbose log.

To do this, open C:\Program Files\MTI Film\Cortex_currentbuild\cortex.exe.config in a text editor and find the section

 <switches>
      <add name="sourceSwitch" value="Information"/>
   </switches>

edit the element to read

<add name="sourceSwitch" value="Verbose"/>

Save and close the file.
Recreate the issue.

Remember to return this value to the original setting once the problem is resolved to avoid taking up space with many large daily log files.